By DSTribune
Introduction
As many have heard recently residents of Flint Michigan have been rightly outraged due to the high presence of toxic chemicals including lead in their drinking water. The question arises how did this occur and was it a forseeable incident? The backstory that led up to this incident can be generalized into a few main chapters.
- Flint had long sourced their water from the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD)
- The city had financial incentive to reduce spending because they were under financial stress
- Flint went into an agreement with the Karegnondi Water Authority (KWA) and their to be completed source from Lake Huron(end of 2016)
- The existing supplier DWSD provided their 12 month notice that their supply contract would end on April 2014
- The flint river was relied on to supply water in the interim
Hypothesis
In this analysis we will be exploring data from the US Geological Water Quality Survey to analyse the Flint incident starting at the source or pre-treated water as well as nearby streams in Detroit and near Lake Huron. It is not meant to serve as conclusive evidence of any kind. We will be looking specifically at chloride concentrations to see if Flint has very corrosive water to begin with.
Before we begin let’s check for and install any necessary packages for this story
setwd("~/DSTribune/Stories/FlintWaterQuality")
library(ggplot2)
library(dplyr)library(xtable)
This is really a story of three water sources and three counties. Flint located in Genesee County originally sourced their water from the Detroit Water and Sewage Department which sources its water from multiple rivers including the Detroit River as well as Lake Huron. The Detroit River is located in Wayne County and Lake Huron intake in Sanilac County. The KWA plant that was to replace the more expensive DWSD water is still under construction and will source its water from Lake Huron.
We will download fresh water …read more
Source:: r-bloggers.com